anarchism, Anarchist ideasComments Off on THE “ANARCHIST HYPOTHESIS” IN THE 21st CENTURY. A reply by Octavio Alberola to Gabriel Kuhn’s “The Anarchist Hypothesis, or Badiou, Žižek and Anti-Anarchist Prejudice”

Sep262016

Octavio Alberola

Reading the interesting essay “The Anarchist Hypothesis or Badiou, Žižek and Anti-Anarchist Prejudice”[1] by our Austrian comrade and friend Gabriel Kuhn, I was prompted to spell out where I agree and take issue with what he sets out in the essay; even though I agree with his rebuttal of the views and claims of those two renowned neo-marxist philosophers on the subject of anarchism, I take issue with the relevance and viability of his proposition – a counter to Alain Badiou’s “communist hypothesis” – of some “anarchist hypothesis” founded upon “a strong, united collective movement under a shared name”.

To be more specific, my response to the essay was grounded in the view that the “points of agreement” validate the “points of disagreement” and that the most salient events to have come to pass over the five years that have elapsed since the essay was written fail to bear out his proposition. So, rather than going into the reasons why his “hypothesis” does not strike me as pertinent or viable, allow me briefly to summarise those “points of agreement” and “points of disagreement”.

Beginning at 5.00 in the morning of 17 August, 1963, in the execution chamber of Carabanchel Prison, Madrid, two anarchists —Francisco Granado and Joaquin Delgado of ‘Defensa Interior’, the anti-Francoist defence committee of the Libertarian Movement in Exile (CNT, FAI, FIJL) — were strangled and their spines snapped by the medieval device known as the ‘garrote vil.’ Both were innocent of the crimes with which they had been convicted just four days earlier by a summary Francoist court martial— planting exposive devices in Franco’s security and fascist labour headquarters, neither of which had caused death or serious injuries. Carlos Fonseca, one of Spain’s finest investigative journalists, has examined this black episode of the Franco years with his usual historian’s rigour and forensic tenacity: interviewing friends and families of the two men, anarchists, informers, police, lawyers and judges, recovering documents and scouring the archives. A fascinating and chilling insight into the anti-Francoist resistance, the workings of Francoist ‘justice’, and the still unresolved case of Delgado and Granado, Spain’s own ‘Sacco and Vanzetti.’

This third volume of Christie’s memoirs provides the historical and political context for the international anti-Franco resistance of the anarchist ‘First of May Group’, from 1967 to the dictator’s death in 1975. It is a first-hand account — by someone accused but acquitted — of the campaign of anti-state and anti-capitalist bombings by diverse groups of libertarian militants who came together as the ‘Angry Brigade’ to challenge the aggressively anti-working class policies of the Tory government of Edward Heath.

anarchism, Anarchist ideasComments Off on “LIBERATION” IDEOLOGIES AND TRANSFORMING SOCIETY IN THE 21ST CENTURY by Octavio Alberola (Translated by Paul Sharkey)

Aug262014

“No longer does innovation come about through parties, trade unions, bureaucracies or politics. It is now dependent on individual moral concern. No longer do we look to political theory for an indication of what we should be doing; we need no tutors. The change is ideological and it runs deep.”

(M Foucault, 1978)

Back in 1978 I opened an article on the topic “Ethics and Revolution – the dialectical tension of the age” [i] with the quotation above from Michel Foucault; not merely to underline the change that was taking place in terms of social transformation but also because it struck me that that change was of great significance to anarchism and liberation struggles.

More than three decades have now passed since then and the course of history has repeatedly borne out what, back then, was more than plain to be seen: that “innovation no longer comes about through parties, trade unions, bureaucracies and politics”, that “nobody looks to political theory any more for guidance as to what we should be doing” and that “we have no need of tutors”. This does not mean, however, that there is not still an insistence – coming from various strands of the left (institutional left and supposedly “alternative” left alike) – upon the need to theorise about action before setting about it and that some grassroots groups are not still on the look-out for tutors …

Anarchism in SpainComments Off on Three French Libertarians in Franco’s Jails — Alain Pecunia, Bernard Ferri and Guy Batoux by Steven Forti (Atlantica). Translated by Paul Sharkey

Jul222014

Alain Pecunia-1965 (Carabanchel Prison)

“Those were bright and happy years. Awesome times! We were out to make revolution. Was it worth it? On that I am clear; it was worth it!” So says an amiable and chatty Alain Pecunia in a phone conversation from his Paris home. Thereby summing up his teenage years back in the 60s, divided between De Gaulle’ France and Franco’s Spain. Alain Pecunia’s story is little known this side of the Pyrenees, although his life has a lot to do with Spain and anti-Francoism. In 2004 he wrote an account of those years in Les ombres ardentes. Un francais de 17 ans dans les prisons franquistes (The Burning Shadows. A 17 Year-Old Frenchman in Franco’s Prisons). “There is a lot of talk about the intellectuals who opposed Franco but very little is said of the workers and peasants who did so. Which is why I wrote the book”, he says. “In Carabanchel prison I ran into peasants from Valencia and miners from Mieres. I dedicate Les ombres ardentes to them, lest we forget about their struggle.” (en Français – en Español)

anarchism, Anarchist activism, Spanish anarchismComments Off on THE INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT A study of the origins and development of the revolutionary anarchist movement in Europe 1945-’73 Edited by Albert Meltzer eBook £1.50 (see eBookshelf)

Aug072013

A concise study of the origins and development of the revolutionary anarchist movement in Europe 1945-73, with particular reference to the First of May Group. Formed in 1966 by the post-war generation of (largely Spanish) anarchist militants this group took up arms against Franco and US imperialism was the best known anarchist activist group of the period, representing a continuation of the work of Francisco Sabaté (el Quico) and the immediate post-war Spanish urban and rural guerrilla resistance, and a bridgehead into the next period when revolutionary activism in many countries (Germany, USA, Italy, and South America) consisted of many strands, some of which were authoritarian Marxist—usually Maoist, sometimes Council-Communist, occasionally Trotskyist, others Anarchist. Includes background, a chronology, and documents from The First of May Group, (search for El Grupo Primero de Mayo) the International Revolutionary Solidarity Movement and the Federación Ibérica de Juventudes Libertarias. LOOK INSIDE

Notes for an ongoing inquiry into the pernicious role of police and security service informers, infiltrators, agents of influence, malfeasors and traitors, particularly within the Spanish anarchist movement (1939-1975)— and any lessons to be learned thereof . . .

I, Cipriano Mera*, hereby impugn Germinal Esgleas**, general secretary of the Intercontinental Secretariat (SI) of the National Confederation of Labour of Spain in Exile (CNTE), on the following grounds:

FIRST: For deliberately accepting the position he currently holds, despite the fact that the Congress which appointed him rubber-stamped the performance of the DI Section (Interior Defence, the clandestine action planning section of the CNT-FAI-FIJL) — from which he later resigned — whereas he was knowingly at odds with said performance and with the aims and objectives of the aforementioned Section (the DI), and for exploiting his position — from within and without — deliberately to sabotage said Section, right from its inception.

SECOND: As the person primarily responsible for the majority of the problems that thwarted the normal coordination of activities under the Defence (DI) remit, and because of his determination to torpedo its operations, as evidenced by his resignation some months in advance of the Confederal Congress at which he knew he would be proposed as candidate for the post of general secretary, thereby pre-empting any scrutiny of his conduct in respect of his obligations as a member of the DI.

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Anarchism

Anarchism swept us away completely, because it demanded everything of us and promised everything to us. There was no remote corner of life that it did not illumine ... or so it seemed to us ... shot though with contradictions, fragmented into varieties and sub-varieties, anarchism demanded, before anything else, harmony between deeds and words
- Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary